Using CSAT (Professional and Enterprise)

Your customers can provide feedback about their support experience by rating their solved tickets. When you enable CSAT (customer satisfaction ratings), end-users receive an email 24 hours after the ticket has been set to solved that asks them to briefly evaluate their experience, as shown here:

The survey is designed to maximize the response rate by being quick and simple while also gathering the essential data: a positive or negative rating. Customers can also provide a comment if they want. You can view your overall score and individual ratings in the Customer Satisfaction dashboard (see Viewing your Customer Satisfaction score and ratings).

Customer satisfaction rating is available on Professional, and Enterprise. You must be an administrator to enable customer satisfaction ratings.

Understanding the end-user experience

End-users do not have to be logged in to rate their tickets. Clicking a response link in the email opens a URL to the ticket and prompts the end-user to rate the ticket and add a comment if they'd like, as shown here:

In this example, the end-user clicked the 'Good, I'm satisfied' link so the Good button is shaded green to indicate that it is the selected rating. A comment can be added and the rating can be changed.

If you have satisfaction reasons enabled, end-users who select 'Bad, I'm unsatisfied' are presented with a drop-down menu of possible reasons for their negative response.

End-users can change their rating by clicking the emailed link again or by accessing the ticket through the My activities page in Help Center, then resubmitting their response. Ratings can be changed until the ticket is closed. See Tracking your support requests for information on viewing your tickets in Help Center.

The following rules apply to end-users when using satisfaction rating:

End-users cannot opt-out of receiving survey requests.

Satisfaction rating is per ticket, not per customer. End-users receive a survey request for each of their tickets that are solved.

Once a ticket is set to "Closed" status, the temporary URL will no longer work. It will re-direct the user to a generic page.

When and how end-users are asked for a satisfaction rating through email is customizable. You can set a time other than the default 24 hours later for to send the email. You can also add the survey request in the email that customers receive when a an agent marks a ticket as solved instead. You can also use business rules to be more selective about (include or exclude) which tickets generate the survey request.

Understanding how the survey request is sent

When you enable customer satisfaction rating (see Enabling customer satisfaction rating), a system-generated automation called Request customer satisfaction rating is added to Zendesk Support. This automation sends the survey email to the ticket requester 24 hours after the ticket is solved. You can of course customize this.

The email body in the automation uses a placeholder called {{satisfaction.rating_section}} to insert the survey question into the message, as shown here:

Hello {{ticket.requester.name}},
We'd love to hear what you think of our customer service. Please take a moment to answer one simple question below:
{{satisfaction.rating_section}}
Here's a reminder of what your ticket was about: {{ticket-of-leave_formatted}}

When customers receive the email, they simply click either the Good or Bad links and follow the steps described above.

Note: As noted above, the survey is sent when the ticket is set to Solved. It's possible to use a different status in the automation, such as Pending, but the ticket would have had to be set to Solved at least once before.

About the Request Customer Satisfaction Rating automation

Note: Remember that the condition statement is Hours since solved is 24 not Hours since solved greater than 24. This means that when you first enable customer satisfaction rating, none of the tickets that have been solved for more than 24 hours will generate a survey email. You can change this of course.

You'll notice that there's a Ticket Satisfaction condition as well. This condition has the following values:

Unoffered means that the survey has not previously been sent

Offered means that the survey has already been sent

Bad is the requester's negative rating

Bad with comment is the requester's negative rating with their comment

Good is the requester's positive rating

Good with comment is the requester's positive rating with their comment

The unoffered value is used here because we only want to send the survey for tickets that have not already been rated.

The automation actions send the survey request email to the requester.

The {{satisfaction.rating_section}} placeholder contains the rating question and answer links. You can modify the surrounding message as needed. And as always, a canceling action is used to complete the automation; ticket satisfaction is set to offered to requester.

This automation can be modified to exclude tickets using many different criterion. For example, you might not want surveys sent for tickets assigned to a certain group or from a certain organization or for tickets containing certain tags.

The results of customer satisfaction surveys for agents are shown in the agent's dashboard and in a view called Rated tickets from the last 7 days.

Agents see, in their dashboard (when they click the Home icon () in the sidebar), the number of good and bad tickets for the last week and the overall satisfaction rating for the agent and all of the agents in Zendesk Support over the last 60 days (including the current day).

The calculation of the overall satisfaction rating uses the following simple formula:

This means that the score is an average of the total positive ratings from the past 60 days. An agent with a score of 90% means that over the past 60 days, 90% of the ratings they received were positive.

Agents, groups, and the account all have scores. The overall account score (in the example above, 93%) is the average for all agents in Zendesk Support. The two ratings provide feedback about individual performance and the average performance of all agents.

Note: An overall rating score will not be shown until 30 tickets are rated. This applies at the agent, group, and account levels. This means that an agent needs 30 ratings, a group (all agents within the group) needs 30 ratings, and the account (all the agents in your Zendesk account) needs 30 ratings.

The view (Rated tickets from the last 7 days) gives you a quick overview of the rating activity, with a Satisfaction column containing both Good and Bad ratings. You can clone and modify this view or create your own. This view is inactivate by default.

The following rules apply to agents when using customer satisfaction rating:

Agents cannot rate tickets.

All agents see their ratings in their dashboard. This feature is enabled at the account level and applies to all agents in your Zendesk account. You cannot exclude individual agents from receiving ratings on the tickets they are assigned to.

Additionally, ratings cannot be moderated. All ratings are shown.

Enabling customer satisfaction ratings

By default, customer satisfaction ratings is disabled. You must be an administrator to enable it. The procedure to enable ratings differs slightly if you are using Zendesk Explore.

You can also enable satisfaction reasons, which allow you to add a follow-up question to negative survey responses. For information, see Working with satisfaction reasons.

If you are not using Zendesk Explore

Click the Reporting icon () in the sidebar, then click the Satisfaction tab.

Click Start surveying today.

Zendesk Support is now set up to send your end-users the customer satisfaction rating email. Enabling this also creates a new automation called Request customer satisfaction rating (System Automation) and a view called Rated tickets from the last 7 days. Both can be modified as needed to suit your workflow.

To re-enable or disable customer satisfaction ratings

Click the Reporting icon () in the sidebar, then click the Satisfaction tab.

Click the menu icon, then select Enable surveys or Disable surveys.

If you are using Zendesk Explore

In Support, Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then click Settings > Customers.

On the Satisfaction tab of the End-users (customers) page, click Allow customers to rate tickets.

Zendesk Support is now set up to send your end-users the customer satisfaction rating email. Enabling this also creates a new automation called Request customer satisfaction rating (System Automation) and a view called Rated tickets from the last 7 days. Both can be modified as needed to suit your workflow.

Using customer satisfaction rating placeholders

Aside from the placeholder mentioned above, {{satisfaction.rating_section}}, the customer satisfaction rating feature adds four other related placeholders. All of these placeholders can be used in various ways and are described in the following table.

Note: Placeholders are best used in triggers and automations. Inserting them into a macro or comment creates a plain text version of the CSAT request, which permits other users to submit a satisfaction score for the requester and requires end-users to click the URL and sign into your Help Center to complete the survey.

Table 1. Customer satisfaction rating placeholders

Placeholder

Description

{{satisfaction.rating_section}}

A formatted block of text prompting the user to rate satisfaction.

{{satisfaction.current_rating}}

The text value of the current satisfaction rating, either Good or Bad.

{{satisfaction.positive_rating_url}}

A URL to rate the support positively.

{{satisfaction.negative_rating_url}}

A URL to rate the support negatively.

{{satisfaction.rating_url}}

A URL to rate the support (positive or negative are not pre-selected).

{{satisfaction.current_comment}}

The comment that the user added when rating the ticket.

Reporting on customer satisfaction

The way you view customer satisfaction reports depends on the reporting product you are using.

If you use Support Professional or Enterprise, you can use the Insights dashboard to view pre-built satisfaction reports (see Using pre-built reports) or you can built your own custom reports.

If you are using Zendesk Explore Lite or Professional, view CSAT reports on the Satisfaction tab of the Zendesk Support dashboard (see Overview of the Zendesk Support dashboard). If you are using Explore Professional, you can also build your own custom reports.

72 Comments

I'm getting a lot of survey responses about our product versus how the support agent actually handled the interaction. Is there a good way to split that feedback out? Like a first box that says something like "How would you rate the PeopleMatter product that you called about today?" and THEN the "How would you rate the person that helped you in Support?"

The first thing that springs to mind here is that you probably have a trigger set up to close the ticket at the same time that the survey is sent out. Once the ticket is closed, a satisfaction rating can't be registered so the link won't work.

Is there any way to embed the fields that are in the pop-up webpage when you click on the "Good Im satisfied" and "Bad..." in the email so the user doesnt have to deal with another webpage.

I know from personal experience when I get links like those that are being sent in the surveys,click on an option , and get presented with another webpage I feel like Ive been tricked into providing a simple "yes" "no" to additional info. Even if I don't want to add anything I still have to close out the webpage. I then avoid that email from that ;point on.

Id rather have the user the option to add the comments and reason for bad experience in the email if possible

Hi Bill! Unfortunately the {{satisfaction.rating_section}} is a placeholder that by default opens a new window (as are the {{satisfaction.positive_rating_url}} and {{satisfaction.negative_rating_url}}). I definitely think that's valid feedback, though, and would recommend you post your use case in our product feedback forum! With the recent release of satisfaction reasons, it's easy to see how feedback about this particular feature has influenced development, so voicing your personal experience is highly recommended.

We are not setting up the satisfaction scroll and we found that the page opened by temporary link does not have the same look-and-feel of our current HelpCenter. Is there any way to change how the page looks like?

I wish i had better news, however the Satisfaction Rating landing page end users are directed to when selecting the rating link is separate from Help Center and therefore not editable or impacted by your Help Center's theme and appearance.

Our Product team however is in the process of improving the look and responsive of the satisfaction rating page and there should hopefully be noticeable improvements soon!

Thanks for getting back and I hope the function will be available soon. I found the satisfaction rating page of support.zendesk.com does look similar to that of your own HC so I believe you are already working on this :)

As an agent, I would love to be notified when a customer submits a satisfaction rating.

As an admin, I’d love to be able to remove a bogus satisfaction rating—for example, when a customer of our customers doesn’t like the support they got from our customer, nothing I can do to make it better.

Your second point is one of the main reasons why we stick to text only -- to maximize compatibility with email clients and to avoid any sort of formatting errors for our 91,000+ clients.

The article you found is exactly where I would point you to for customization of those links -- It's been widely used and effective for many that have used that tip (though be aware, any user submitted tips aren't supported by us (or is support for any customizations), so use at your own discretion).

Adding these images would be no worse than standard signature images -- but as you've indicated, may be something that MIGHT get filtered.

If you're concerned about deliverability in general, I would point you to increasing the trustability of your emails in general (SPF and DKIM records would be the way) Here are two articles for that directly:

While it is possible to get the satisfaction rating for an individual customer, it is not possible with default functionality to display it within the Support ticket interface. The closest option would be creating a dashboard and viewing in the Insights tab of the Reporting menus.

To create a satisfaction report of an individual your report could look something like this:

Hi - is there any way to send out the surveys at a random interval, rather than for every solved ticket? I would like to gather feedback without inundating end-users with a survey each time. Say for example, send the survey after every 10 tickets or choose a few random tickets a month to send the survey for.

How would you rate the support you received?

I was able to customize the links in the survey email to use different wording than the Good. I'm satisfied, Bad, I'm not satisfied default. However, the links the user is taken too still have the default text. Is there any way to customize the Good. I'm satisfied, Bad, I'm not satisfied buttons the user sees after clicking the survey link?

At present there is no way to customize the satisfaction surveys or their corresponding URL's like you are trying to achieve here. This feature is not designed to be customized in this way at this point in time. We recommend you submit a feature request for this here in our product feedback community. :)

I did some testing on my end to confirm, and I was able to find out that the CSAT placeholders will not show up in agent signatures. I also double checked, and the CSAT placeholders don't render properly in macros either. So I'm afraid that the separate email is the only option. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

You can make a Trigger that is only for tickets in which the status has changed to Solved. So all your other communications on the request can be handled with a different Trigger, without offering satisfaction.

I like this better than sending a separate email with the rating option